Haeng Bok

I can finally say my life is settling back to the usual routine.

The university thing is half-settled, and as always, the problem gets pushed back ever further. I'm so mentally exhausted when it comes to my uni that I've been trying to detach myself and retrieve my mental and emotional tentacles from around the problem.

I keep telling myself that I can only worry so much about so many things. I simply cannot allow myself to get stuck on something, anything.

Dad has been very insensitive again.

He is once again making nasty and insulting comments about my lack of full-time, paid occupation. He has already begun to forget the amount of work I've been doing for the Bible Society's various projects - even though some of them were just recently published.

It is rather depressing to think of all the negative comments he has been making about me. Especially how I slaved over the editing and the damned reunion dinner.

I mean, I know I'm not contributing financially. But I do my part in keeping our place clean and working very hard with all my freelance stuff. I don't ask for much allowance and even came home when I could have chosen to stay in Australia instead. It is not as though my dad can't afford to pay the bills, etc. He has been buying new cars every few years.

What I want to know is if he really values money over well-being. Money over family values and gestures of love.

Perhaps to my dad, I'm really not worth having as a daughter - not worth having in dollars and cents. Perhaps he really sees me as just another form of investment - one that isn't reaping enough harvest for him.

I suppose nowadays, having a caring and filial daughter, who willingly and without being told to, cooks you all your favourite dishes, and doesn't complain when you bring your particularly difficult girlfriend home every night, is really not worth anything in monetary terms and so worth nothing at all.

It is so hurtful to do so much and then hear him talk like I am the most useless person in the world. I know he tells his friends this too. Which is why most of them think I'm a useless-good-for-nothing bimbo and treat me as such as well.

Maybe it is because of the sort of father I have, I simply can't stand how this world puts a price on everything.

This is why I believe that one can have all the money in the world and still wonder why he cannot purchase happiness, a happy marriage, a happy family life. Along the man-made way to fortune, you lose a little something - and that little something that you lose could one day turn out to be the most precious thing you have always been searching for in your life.

People often hear parents say that it is not easy to be parents nowadays. Whoever knew being a child to my dad and a niece to his sister could be so freaking frustrating too.


- 1 March 2007 3am -